


Call Out the Instigator

by cashewdani



Category: How I Met Your Mother
Genre: Break Up, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-04-11
Updated: 2007-04-11
Packaged: 2018-01-15 02:56:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1288600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cashewdani/pseuds/cashewdani
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>So Robin and Ted managed to make it until right after Lily and Marshall’s wedding before it became blatantly obvious that the two of them were never going to be standing on an altar together.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Call Out the Instigator

So Robin and Ted managed to make it until right after Lily and Marshall’s wedding before it became blatantly obvious that the two of them were never going to be standing on an altar together. Or maybe it only became blatantly obvious to Robin, because she’d been the one hiccupping into the phone at four in the morning about babies and tulips to a very exhausted Barney.

And then things were back to being like they were after Victoria, and Barney hated it because it meant that he’d have to choose sides and split his time, and sometimes it was just easier to all sit at McLaren’s rather than setting aside days of the week for his respective friends. He’d never done anything like this before, because the choice in the past had always been Ted, easily. But now there was Ted or there was Robin and the week that the honeymooners were away was probably the longest and shittiest of Barney’s life.

Ted he could handle, because Ted did what he always did after a break-up. He made a shoebox. Everything that hurt too bad to look at went in there; ticket stubs and earrings and stupid post-it notes from the refrigerator. And that shoebox went into the closet with all the other shoeboxes and Barney’s job was to make sure it stayed there. That was all he had to do. The other stuff was a given, like buying drinks and playing laser tag, and coaxing girls with, “Have you met Ted?”. The only thing different about a deserted Ted were those shoeboxes.

But Robin came with a whole mess of things that weren’t nearly as simple. She wanted to read him articles out of _Cosmopolitan_ and have him tell her they were right about things, as if that could be possible, and eat ice cream and worst of all, she kept trying to kiss him.

That scares him more than anything else because rather than just letting it happen over those ever increasing glasses of wine and bowls of Phish Food, he tells her _not like this_ and puts her to bed.

And she cries which he hates beyond the telling of it, and even though he knows that Ted must, he has to, at least Ted has the decency to do it away from where Barney can have any idea it’s really going on. But not Robin, who makes him tell her she’s not heartless and that yes, he finds her attractive. He never thought that he’d be able to wipe the tears off a woman’s face, but he does it without even being asked. And even as the days go on, he won’t let her lips touch his.

It’s just hard, because the entire time he’s sitting on Ted’s couch watching _SportsCenter_ , he’s thinking about Robin alone in her apartment tearing up over _While You Were Sleeping_ on TBS, and if he’s talking with her in the coffee shop in Brooklyn she likes the lemon poppy seed muffins from, then all he sees is Ted wallowing in his closet surrounded by angsty mementos.

Thankfully, the marrieds return from Scotland, and Barney is so grateful to have a moment. Just a moment for him, and whatever he wants to do. And he’d been thinking about going suit shopping, or hitting the OTB or maybe just watching something he actually wants to in his own living room, but he finds himself at Robin’s under a blanket her grandmother crocheted for her when she moved away. _Seinfeld_ ’s on the TV because she likes that it’s about nothing, and when her head’s on his shoulder, he kisses her hairline. Just like it’s a thing they do. And maybe it is now, because she doesn’t say anything but thank you when he goes to catch the last train home.

With Lilly and Marshall back it’s supposed to get easier. And some things do. Robin stops crying, and Ted goes out to dinner with a new girl, just dinner, but still, for Ted that’s huge. They eventually can all go to the bar again, and have game nights and this is when everything should be going back to feeling normal.

But instead Barney finds himself thinking about the way it feels when Robin’s knee touches his under the table and whether anyone knows that he’s thinking it. If she knows. She sends him little smiles sometimes, and he thinks back to those nights on her bed, her wet face and little tank tops, and he wonders how he didn’t kiss her then, when she’d wanted it.

**********

One day at McLaren’s, when his head actually feels a little clear, which is funny considering he’s on his third tumbler of the night, they wind up talking about the Fourth of July, and Marshall’s telling a story about watching the Macy’s fireworks with his family when Barney spews out, “Robin, we’re totally doing that Wednesday.”

She looks at him like he’s a little nuts. In fact they’re all looking at him like he’s a little nuts, but he doesn’t really care. “Aren’t the Macy’s fireworks one of those New York things you’re always getting disgusted with, but I enjoy because I’m from Canada?”

“First of all Robin, Canadia. It’s pronounced Canadia, how many times do we have to go through this? And secondly, fireworks are awesome. Look it up, totally true.”

And Marshall’s back to telling his story, which Barney’s ok with because it’s basically validating his fireworks equal awesome theory, and Robin gives him a nod in the middle so he’s golden.

He manages to score an empty rooftop with a view of the East River, in the same way he does everything, with much secrecy and little logic. There’s a chilling bottle of the cheap wine he remembers she likes from weeks ago, and cotton candy just because it seems like the right choice.

And when she shows up, he’s not nervous, not that he’d ever admit he was before. They sit cross-legged on beach towels and play Rummy 500 while the sun sets and Robin laughs. When she looks at him, it seems like sometimes she can’t really tell who it is she’s seeing, and he thinks he likes that.

The first shot going off makes her grab his hand, and she blushes like she’s embarrassed but doesn’t let go. She watches the sky, and he watches her, and in that time he can understand all of those things that Ted’s always going on about.

When the finale begins, the sky bright red, white and blue, he yells over the noise, “I want to kiss you,” and for a moment it seems like the wrong choice. But then Robin’s mouth is on his and when she comes up for air she asks, “What took you so long?”

He doesn’t know the answer, even though he’s thought about it for months, maybe even since that night they played _Battleship_ and she suited up for him, so he kisses her again, hands in her hair and tongue against hers. Maybe he really is too liberal with the use of the word legendary.


End file.
